Irony Quotes - Page 12

• The irony here is we're looking for water and we're looking out for water. Without it you die, and with too much of it you die.

  Cody Lundin

  Water, Survival, Too Much

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• A good friend, who knows whereof he speaks, has observed of trials, ‘If it’s fair, it is not a true trial!’ That is, without the added presence of some inexplicableness and some irony and injustice, the experience may not stretch us or lift us sufficiently. The crucifixion of Christ was clearly the greatest injustice in human history, but the Savior bore up under it with majesty and indescribable valor.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Adversity, Good Friend, Crucifixion Of Christ

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• The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.

  Gerry Spence

  Unjust Society, People, Appreciate

  Gerry Spence (1989). “With justice for none: destroying an American myth”, Crown

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• Steiner has here transformed the vaporous conceptions of his life, the vapors of what never was and never will be, from their aeriform state to a fine and ethereal substantiality. My Unwritten Books is a gathering of shades, an elegant and eloquent gathering of mind, feeling, and autumnal passion. (...) And that is the lovely irony of this unique little book. None of these unwritten books should have been written. They are better here, as they are, untamed and errant phantoms of a brilliance whose emanations no one mortal lifetime could ever accommodate in full.

  Nick Tosches

  Book, Passion, Unique

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• The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

  Carl L. Becker

  Men, Ironic, Belief

  Progress and Power Lecture 3 (1935)

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• Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was the belief in facts.

  John Gunther

  Ironic, Superstitions, Facts

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• Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and fancy women.

  Lord Kelvin

  Horse, Race, Ironic

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• Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Writing, Advice, Ironic

  "Unkempt Thoughts". Book by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, 1962.

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• There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

  Flannery O'Connor

  Two, Southern, Quality

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• The Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it - the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Faith, Men, Thinking

  "The Ascent of Man" (Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"), 1973.

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• There's a certain amount of what I wear that I wear for irony.

  Lily Allen

  Certain, Amount

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• It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. There is irony here. I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man—a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.

  R. C. Sproul

  Mean, Men, Here I Am

  R. C. Sproul (2013). “The Holiness of God”, p.33, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• In a sense, a cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense – a ‘final’ irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the ‘West’s’ escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space.

  Donna J. Haraway

  Men, Self, Space

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• I try to write about complex issues--young people in an adult world-- full of irony and contradiction in a narrative style that relies heavily on suspense with a texture rich in emotion and imagery. I take a great deal of satisfaction in using popular forms-- the adventure, the mystery, the thriller-- so as to hold my reader with the sheer pleasure of a good story. At the same time I try to resolve my books with an ambiguity that compels engagement. In short, I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

  Avi

  Book, Writing, Adventure

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• It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.

  Chris Hedges

  Thinking, Needs, Roles

  Chris Hedges (2011). “Death of the Liberal Class”, p.16, Nation Books

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• You see, the secret of the gospel is that we become more spiritually mature when we focus less on what we need to do for God and focus more on all that God has already done for us. The irony of the gospel is that we actually perform better as we grow in our understanding that our relationship with God is based on Christ's performance for us, not our performance for him.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Focus, Understanding, Secret

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• Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

  Kathleen Norris

  Dying, Desert, Faces

  Kathleen Norris (2001). “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography”, p.139, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But that night as I drove back to Montreal, I at least discovered this: that there is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.

  Hugh MacLennan

  Simple, Night, Tragedy

  Hugh MacLennan (2009). “Watch that Ends the Night”, p.266, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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• What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.

  Jacques Attali

  Communication, Self, Growth

  "Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music". Book by Richard Kostelanetz, Joseph Darby, 1996.

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• Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

  James Thurber

  Humor, Sarcasm, Doe

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• Step by step, you make your way forward. That’s why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Motivational, Writing, Procrastination

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• It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace - that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War, and, by establishing the popularity of economic planning, furnishing it with some of the procedures for its reform

  Eric Hobsbawm

  War, October Revolution, Reform

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• One of the tragic ironies of history is that such original and creative geniuses as Buddha and Jesus have been extolled as perfect patterns for all to emulate. In the very struggle to be like someone else rather than to be one's own true self, or to do one's own best in one's own environment, a child is in danger of losing the pearl that is really beyond price - the integrity of his (or her) own soul.

  Sophia Lyon Fahs

  Jesus, Children, Integrity

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• To explore the unknown and the familiar, distant and near and to record in detail with the eyes of a child, any beauty, (of the flesh or otherwise) horror, irony, traces of utopia or Hell. Select your team with care, but when in doubt, take on some new crew and give them a chance. But avoid at all costs fluctuations of sincerity with your best people.

  Dan Eldon

  Children, Team, Eye

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• Part of the irony of environmentalism is questing for solutions when you know you're part of the problem.

  Diane Ackerman

  Problem, Knows, Solutions

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds”, p.156, Vintage

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